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ADDRESS 



DELIVERED ON THE OCCASION OF THE 



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Jfnneral Solemnities 



OF THE LATE 



||risiitoi gf % ftnttcft State, 



FIRST CONSTITUTIONAL PRESBYTERIAN CH JRCH. 

APEIL 19, 1 

BY REV. H. ] JNNING. Pastor. 




BALTIMORE .... JOHN W. WOODS, PRINTER, 
202 Baltimore Street. 
186 5. 






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ADDRESS 



DELIVERED ON THE OCCASION OF THE 



Jftttteral Solemnities 



OF THE LATE 



Will 



je fciitiefc irate 



IN THE 



FIRST CONSTITUTIONAL PRESBYTERIA1L-CHIJRCH, 

WASHlHG^ 



APRIL 19, 1865. 




BY REV. H. DUNNING, Pastor. 



BALTIMORE .... JOHN W. WOODS, PRINTER, 
202 Baltimore Street. 
1865. 






\-L 



ADDKESS. 



Brethren and Friends : 

It is no common event which calls us to- 
gether to-day. It is no common grief which bows 
the heart of this whole nation to-day. It is no com- 
mon scene which is witnessed over our whole land 
to-day. 

The eyes of this whole nation, and the sorrowing 
heart of the whole nation are, at this moment, 
turned, with an intensity of painful interest never 
before experienced, to the national Capital, — and 
what do ive there behold ? The representatives of the 
power and authority of the nation ; — Governors, 
Judges, Senators, Legislators, Heads of Departments 
of Government, Military authorities, the highest 
Representatives of all the Legislative, Judicial, and 
Executive authorities of the land, congregated to- 
gether, bowed in sorrow, and as the representatives 
of the national power ; and the national heart, paying 
the last, sad rites of respect and love to the remains 
of our murdered President. Never before was a 
nation's interest, sympathy, sorrow, centered, with 
such intensity of emotion, upon any one point, as, at 
this hour, upon the Capital of this nation. This 
whole people from Atlantic's coast to the Pacific, 
bows together in deepest grief around the bier of our 
smitten President — with our State's and City's rep- 



resentatives there, with the whole smitten and sor- 
rowing nation everywhere, do we also here, around 
our altar, in the house of our God, bow together in 
token of our sorrow, veneration, and love of our de- 
parted Chief Magistrate. May God, in his mercy, 
sanctify to us and to the nation this hour of our 
unity in sorrow and respect for the immortal dead. 

This is not the time, my friends, for the indulgence 
of reflections upon the enormity of the crime, which 
has laid the representative of national life, authority, 
and power in the dust — nor is it the time to attempt to 
take the gauge of the influence of that nameless 
crime, or of the untoward event to which it led, 
upon the present final struggle with rebellion, or 
upon the future of our country. Nor yet, is it the 
time to attempt an estimate of the life, character, 
and services of that great and good man, whose 
name has already passed among the immortal names 
of history, and whose fame will be commensurate 
with man's reverence of lawful authority and love of 
human freedom. A century hence, when the race 
shall have passed far beyond its present low stage of 
civilization and improvement, and when the great re- 
sults of our present conflict shall have realized their 
measureless blessings to this continent and to the 
world, then and not till then will God raise up the 
man whose pen shall delight to portray the true char- 
acter and influence upon the race of the saviour of 7ns 
countr?/, Abraham Lincoln. And yet, it is proper for 
us at this time, and duty too, to indulge such reflections 
as may present themselves in regard to his character 
and life, whose untimely end we all with hourly in- 



creasing sorrow deplore, and whose funeral solemni- 
ties, in common with the whole sorrowing nation, we 
are now met to celebrate. 

And what were the characteristics of that man 
upon whose shoulders God threw the weight of as 
momentous responsibilities as ever were laid upon 
man ? Some of these traits are manifest to the whole 
world, and need but to be mentioned to secure the 
assent of friend and foe. 

Strikingly prominent among other traits of his char- 
acter was his imperturbable calmness. Amid all the 
trials of faith and patience, all the scenes of strife, and 
excitement, all the perplexities arising from the fail- 
ures of friends and the bitterness of foes, he was never 
betrayed into excitement, or manifestations of wrath, or 
undignified and useless petulance. This unshaken self- 
possession, this imperturbable equanimity formed in 
his character that wonderful patience, and gave him 
that wiry spirit of patient endurance under all the 
trials to which he was subjected, which so remarka- 
bly characterized the man. Who ever saw him ex- 
cited to passion by even the greatest of crimes or 
under the greatest provocations. What public word 
has he ever, while in the Presidential chair, uttered, 
which indicated passion or personal resentment to- 
wards either his political enemies and villifiers, or the 
country's foes at home or abroad ? In and through 
all storms he remained ever calm. 

Equal to his calmness, and doubtless the basis of it, 
was his honesty and integrity of purpose and life. This 
is confessed by all. No man ever spent even a few 
moments in the presence of that man and left him witli 



doubts of the honesty of his heart, or of the sincerity 
of his patriotism. No man in the land to-day believes 
he was a bad man, a dishonest man, a mere political 
partizan, a designing schemer, or any other than a 
most honest man, and a most sincere patriot. It was 
to me most gratifying, at the same time that it ex- 
cited my indignation, to see, in the first issue after 
his death of one of the most bitter and violent of the 
journals, which has spared no means, foul or fair, to 
oppose his administration, and to malign his char- 
acter, a retraction and denial of all its base slanders 
by the acknowledgment of the intense honesty and 
of the personal and political integrity and patriotism 
of this great man. 

And hence, because of his calm, natural self-pos- 
session and patient honesty he was necessarily an 
unselfish man. The generosity and magnanimity of 
his nature are witnessed by all his official acts, and 
by none more clearly than by his dealings towards 
those who arrayed themselves against the nation's 
life and authority, and yet had fallen into the power 
of the Government. His unselfishness is witnessed by 
his whole administration of the authority of Govern- 
ment, during the most critical period of our national 
history, in all which, no one act can be pointed out, 
no one word spoken which indicated, that the Presi- 
dent was therein seeking his own personal advance- 
ment or honor. Singularly free is that public life 
from all suspicion of desire or aim to advance per- 
sonal selfish ends to the detriment of the country. 

Characteristic also in a high degree was the 
humility of this great man. In no public mes- 



sage or address, in no report of private inter- 
view, have you ever yet seen or heard the 
slightest boast from his lips, or intimation or 
indication in public or in private of pride or 
arrogance in his heart. Humble in his estimate 
of his own abilities, yet confident of the sin- 
cerity and integrity of his aims and principles, 
he was ready to receive suggestions and advice from 
every source, and was accessible to the humblest man 
or woman in the land. Called by the providence of 
God to a position of honor, power and responsibility 
second to none in the world, he bore himself to the 
highest or the humblest with equal dignity, conde- 
scension and kindness. Naturally allied to this 
trait was his undeviating conscientiousness ; his unal- 
terable adherence to his moral convictions, and his 
honest annunciation of them in the midst of enemies 
and before the world. 

This most valuable characteristic exhibited itself in 
his pertinacious adherence to the great principles of 
human freedom on which our Government was 
founded, and which, by his oath of office, he was sol- 
emnly bound to maintain. It was because of this 
his intense conscientiousness that he was when once 
he had "set down his foot, " so unswervingly firm to 
all his purposes and faithful to all his promises. Con- 
scientiously sincere in his aim to rescue the nation 
from the most formidable rebellion the world has 
ever seen, to prove in reality, what was so sneeringly 
last into the face of them who aimed to arrest the 
tide of madness which swept over the whole South- 
ern land, a Union-saver, he steadily, faithfully before 



8 



God and man persevered until he was permitted to 
see the blessed prospect of a preserved nation and a 
perpetuated Government opening with cheering as- 
surance before him. No voice of bitterest foe, save 
that of madmen who know not what they say, will 
this day or ever hereafter charge that man, as Presi- 
dent, with treachery to his convictions of truth and 
duty. Born and reared in a Slave State, yet his clear 
moral perceptions and convictions brought him to 
that memorable conclusion and declaration, "If Sla- 
very be not wrong, nothing is wrong ; " a declaration 
strikingly in harmony with that of Thomas Jefferson, 
that "the Almighty has no attribute that can take the 
side of the Slaveholder. "* 

Closely allied with his conscientiousness, and grow- 
ing out of it, was his unshaken trust in God. I shall 

° There is a historical ajipropriateness in the fact that President Lincoln 
should be mourned most of all by the slaves. History judges men especi- 
ally by their relation to great ideas and great movements. The removal 
of slavery from this continent will by and by be thought the grand act of 
this century ; an era like the Reformation in Europe, or the establishment 
of a republic on this side of the Atlantic. Public men will be measured 
by their opposition to or approval of it. Mr. Lincoln will be especially 
remembered as the great emancipator, and the leader of the American Re- 
public when she first shook off the fearful burden of slavery. The "friend 
of the slave" will he his lasting title with posterity. Men will not cease to 
remember and relate his gradual, reasonable, patient efforts to rid the na- 
tion of this curse : his sympathy with those in bonds, the tenacity with 
which he adhered to his policy of emancipation, his increasing sense of 
the guilt of slavery, and his final tragic death, suffered in part from his 
devotion to an oppressed race. 

It is most fitting- that for such a statesman the poor and the bondmen 
should must of all mourn, and that with the tears of the nation he led to a 
higher justice and unity, should fall also the tears of the subject race for 
whom he effected so much while living, and for whom, in part, he died. 

[JV. Y. Times. 



9 

never forget the solemn and tearful earnestness with 
which he responded to the Synod of Pennsylvania 
when in its session in Washington, in the autumn of 
1863, he said in answer to an address which had been 
made to him, "Gentlemen, if God be with us ice shall 
maintain this Government, if not ive shall fail ;" and 
this was uttered with that deep solemnity and pecu- 
liarity of manner which produced the conviction that 
he firmly believed that God was with the nation and 
would bring it through all its great trials.* 

His last inaugural address is replete with the same 
humble trust in the justice and fidelity of God. His 
known habit of spending the hour from 5 to 6 A. M., 
in private devotion speaks in certain language of sin- 
cerity of trust in the unerring guide of nations, which 
might shame many a more pretentious christian. — 
Such were some of the traits which happily blended 
in the character of our late President, combined to- 
gether to peculiarly qualify him for the great trials 
and responsibilities to which, in the providence of 



° The London correspondent of the Philadelphia North American, in nar- 
rating a personal interview with Mr. Gladstone, says : 

"I ventured to express the hope that he appreciated the advantage the 
United .States had had in this great crisis in the admirable character of the 
President. He replied at once, with much animation, that he did en- 
tirely. He had always, he said, thought well of Mr. Lincoln, as probably 
as good a leader as the country could have, but his recent address on his 
inauguration showed a moral elevation which commanded the respect of 
every right feeling man. "I am taken captive," Mr. Gladstone said, in 
substance, "by so striking an utterance as this. I see in it the effect of sharp 
trial when rightly borne to raise men to a higher level of thought and feel- 
ing than they could otherwise reach. It is by cruel sulfering that nations 
are born to a better life, and to individuals, of course, a like experience 
produces a like result." 



10 



God he was called. How humbly, how patiently, 
how perseveringly, how conscientiously, he met them 
all is now before the world, and history will delight 
to write it in lines of gold and glory to his imperish- 
able honor. It seems an infinite calamity, but there 
is almost a moral fitness that the salvation of his coun- 
try should be crowned with his own martyrdom, and 
sealed with his own blood. If anything more were 
needed to wreath his fame, as Saviour of his 
Country, with immortal glory, the assassin's dagger 
has supplied the need, and now, a martyr to the holy 
principles on which he sought to plant the nation, he 
rises to equality with the great and good Washington, 
and, under God, the one as Father, and the other as 
Saviour of his Country, they together, Par nobile 
fratrum, shall go down the stream of the immortal 
ages, honored, revered, beloved, while memory of 
what is great and good and patriotic and true shall 
endure. Even now, ere what was mortal of this 
man has been borne to the tomb, detraction hastes to 
retract her foul slanders, and to testify to the coming 
ages that a truer man, a purer patriot, a firmer friend 
of humanity never lived.* 

Since uttering the above estimate of our beloved President's character 
and future position in history, I have been gratified in finding in the New 
York Times, of this date, copied from an editorial of the Toronto (Canada) 
Globe, the following confirmation of my judgment : 

"His simplicity of character, his straightforward honesty, his kindli- 
ness, even his bluniness of manner, seem to have won the popular heart, 
even among a foreign, and, in matter of opinion, a hostile nation. We 
may judge by that fact of his popularity among the citizens of the North- 
ern States. Almost all of us feel as if we had lost a personal friend. All 
mourn his untimely fate ° ° He was sagacious, 

patient, prudent, courageous, honest, candid . ° ° ° 



11 

But he has fallen; fallen in the midst of his days 
of usefulness, and of success in the preservation 
of our imperilled national life and liberties; fallen 
while four millions of freed hands were lifted to 
heaven imploring blessings upon his head, and when 
a grateful nation had just confidingly entrusted its 
destiny, a second time, into his faithful hands ; fallen 
by the hand of violence, aiming at the national life, 
striking only the national representative ; fallen by a 
new crime ; not homicide, not murder, not suicide, 
but a crime as yet in our national vocabulary with- 
out a name. The nation does well to clothe itself as 
never before in the emblems of mourning. From 
ocean to ocean, over the high mountain tops, shadow- 
ing all our vallies and plains, let the pall of sorrow 
fall. Great is the nation's woe ; such a death ! by 
such means ! for such a cause ! at such a time ! well 
may the nation bow itself in sorrow, and mourn. 

It seems to us that he had gone through his worst trials, that his patience, 
sagacity and honesty would have borne even better fruits in the settlement 
of the affairs of the South than during the wild commotion of the war. — 
He has been cut off at a time when, certainly, he had accomplished a great 
deal, but leaving much undone which he was well qualified to do. A natu- 
rally strong man, of only fifty-six, he might have hoped to live many years af- 
ter finishing his work as President, in the enjoyment of the respect and ad- 
miration justly due to one who had saved the life of his country. He 
will be held, we think by Americans, if not equal to Washington, second 
to none but he. But he had not the gratification of his great predecessor, 
of seeing his work completed and enjoying for a long period the gratitude 
of his countrymen and the admiration of strangers. There are few so hard 
of heart as to not shed a tear over the sudden and bloody termination of 
so bright a career. As great as Washington in many moral and mental 
qualities, his genial character was calculated to win far more popular sym- 
pathy than his predecessor. Ability and honesty all admire, but when to 
them are added kindliness, simplicity, and freedom from selfishness, haughti- 
ness and piide in high position, they win love as well as respect." 



12 



And yet it mourns to day "not as a nation that 
has no hope :" It mourns with heart full of hope 
and blessed assurance, in the midst of success to all 
its toils and struggles ; and with heart and purpose 
under God more than ever firmly fixed in the con- 
sciousness of its own power, stability, duty and des- 
tiny. From the burden of this great woe the nation 
will arise, and soon address itself to its great and 
glorious work. Meanwhile, the duty of this hour is 
humiliation and sorrow. Brethren and friends, let 
us join that sorrowing throng of the great and the 
honored of our land and representatives of all other 
lands that moves at this hour with slow and solemn 
tread from the national mansion, so late the scene of 
a nation's joy and congratulation, and let us pass 
through that long pathway of sorrow, our national 
via dolorosa, until we reach that chosen honored 
spot which is to hold what is mortal of Abraham 
Lincoln, and there will we drop our final tear, in 
sorrow and hope, crying, rest, rest, good and faithful 
servant! Rest, friend of man ! Rest, saviour of thy 
country ! Rest, rest, in honor and in peace ! Thy 
u wor7cs shall follovj thee." 



,'12 



